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Abraham Uutrnlu 



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mt tlj? (0np ISjunarpnth, Amttorraarg 
of ttjr Utrth of Abraham Cittroltt 

Not long prior to the death of Abraham Lincoln, there was 
born at Columbus, Mississippi, a child who has grown, and 
grown much in stature, and more in mind, until he has become 
one of the great figures of our day and time. 

Repeatedly given a place of trust and honor, simple in 
manner, always sincere and loyal, a southerner of southern- 
ers, but, above all, an American of Americans, he stands 
before you tonight that we may hear "A Voice from the 
South." 

Judge Dickinson needs no introduction to his country- 
men. 



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What I say will carry no significance, if I voice merely 
my personal sentiments, though they accord entirely with 
the spirit that prompted this memorial, and pervades this 
assembly. But in what esteem the South holds the name 
and fame of Abraham Lincoln is of national interest. All 
present should with sincere solemnity unite in honoring 
him, who is and always will be regarded as one of the 
world's immortals, and there should be no note of discord in 
the grand diapason which swells up from a grateful people in 
this Centennial Celebration. I would have stayed away, if I 
could not heartily respond to the spirit of the occasion, and 
would not speak in the representative character implied by an 
introduction as a "Voice from the South," if I did not believe 
that what I will say is a true reflection of the feelings and 
judgment of those who have the best right to be regarded as 
sponsors for the South. I recall as vividly as if it were today, 
when, in 1860, a messenger, with passionate excitement, dashed 
up to our school in Mississippi, the state of Jefferson Davis, 
and proclaimed that Abraham Lincoln was elected. The 
Brides of Endcrby did not ring out in more dismal tones, or 



carry a greater shock to the hearts of the people. We had 
passed through a political compaign unsurpassed in bitterness. 
The true Lincoln had not been fully revealed, and had been 
transformed in the South, as the great protagonist of the 
South was transformed in the North, by the heat of the 
fiercest controversy that our country had ever experienced. 

In the youthful imagination stirred to its highest pitch by 
the explosive sentiment of the times, without the corrective of 
mature judgment, Mr. Lincoln's name was invested with such 
terrors as the Chimaera inspired in the children of Lycia. A 
wave of emotions, feelings of indignation, commingled with a 
vague sense of impending evil swept over us. Our souls mir- 
rored the spirit of the times and its environment. From that 
dav to the surrender at Appomattox, we would not have re- 
gretted the death of Mr. Lincoln any more than did the people 
of the North the fall of Stonewall Jackson. The war was 
protracted. There was time for revision of impressions. Sor- 
row in Protean forms, that pervaded every household, and like 
the croaking raven, seemed as if it would never more depart, 
attuned their souls to an appreciation, that those in the high 
tide of happiness and prosperity can never fully have, of facts 
that revealed a gentle spirit and a heart that was womanly in 
its tenderness, and in its sympathies commensurate with human 
suffering. Amid the paeans of victory, sorrows over defeat, 
the times of hope, the periods of despair, congratulations to 
the victorious living, dirges for the dead, in the gloomy inter- 
vals, all too short, when they were not sustained by the excite- 
ment of battle, there drifted in stories of generous acts, soft 
words, and brotherly sentiments from him whom they had re- 



gardcd as their most implacable enemy. They came to know 
that his heart was a stranger to hatred, that he was willing to 
efface himself if his country might be exalted, and that his 
love for the Union surpassed all other considerations. 

They were profoundly impressed, when at his second inau- 
gural, a time when it was apparent that the Confederacy was 
doomed, he said: 

"With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with firm- 
ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive 
on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; 
to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his 
widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cher- 
ish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all na- 
tions." 

With this favorable condition for responsive sentiment, the 
scene changed. Appomattox came, and then in quick sequence 
a total surrender. A civilization which developed some qualities 
of splendor and worth never surpassed, a civilization allied with 
an institution which all other Christian countries had freed 
themselves of, and subsequently condemned, but which the 
South, with its conditions and environments, could not at once, 
without precipitating an immeasurable catastrophe abolish, fell 
into financial, social and political ruin as complete as that 
which overwhelmed the people of Messina. 

The world did not spontaneously comfort them with tender 
words and overwhelm them with generous aid. Foreign na- 
tions dared not offend the triumphant flag. Potential voices 
at the North rang out fiercely for a bloody assize. Then it 
was that the great patriot, undazzled by success, untouched by 



the spirit of revenge, moved by generous sympathies, with the 
eye of a seer, looked beyond the passions of the times, saw 
the surest way for consolidating this people into a Union of 
hearts as well as of states and stretching out his commanding 
arm over the turbulent waters, said : "Peace, be still." The 
magnanimous terms granted to their surrendered soldiers con- 
vinced the southern people that Mr. Lincoln, having accom- 
plished by force of arms the great work of saving the union 
of the states, would consecrate himself with equal devotion 
to the no less arduous and important work, for the endurance 
of our national life, of rehabilitating the seceding states, restor- 
ing to effective citizenship those who had sought to establish 
an independent government, and bringing them back to the 
allegiance which they had disavowed. There was a new esti- 
mate by the southern people of his character and motives. 
They learned that he was not inspired by personal ambition, 
that he was full of the spirit of abnegation, even to the point of 
self-abasement, that he did not exult over them in victory, but 
sorrowed with those in affliction, that his heart was always re- 
sponsive to distress, his soul full of magnanimity, and that he 
was filled with a patriotism which held in its loving embrace 
our entire country. With this new aspect in which he was 
regarded by our people, I well remember where I stood, and 
the consternation that filled all faces, when his assassination 
was announced. I will not say that some fierce natures, that 
some of the thoughtless, did not exult. But, as a witness of 
the times, I testify that there was general manifestation of sor- 
row and indignation. I would not convey the impression that 
it was an exponent of such feeling for Mr. Lincoln as went 



out from the people of the North. That would have been as 
unnatural at that time, as it would have been ignoble to rejoice 
over his suffering, or approve the dastardly act that laid him 
low. It came partly from such chivalric spirit as that which 
evoked the lament of Percy over the fallen Douglas at Chevy 
Chase. It came also from a realization of their own condi- 
tion, the sense of an impending storm, charged with destructive 
thunderbolts forged by political hatred, and launched by those 
who would humiliate them, grind their very faces to the earth, 
make their slaves task-masters over them, and if possible expa- 
triate them and divide their substance, and the belief that 
Abraham Lincoln, he who had been the leader in the fierce 
contest between the states, alone so held the affections and con- 
fidence of the Northern people that he could speedily "bind up 
the nation's wounds" and "achieve and cherish a just and last- 
ing peace among ourselves." 

Nearly forty-four years have passed since that woeful event. 
I stood on Decoration Day by the monument erected in Oak- 
woods Cemetery, mainly by the contributions of Northern 
people, to the memory of the unknown Confederate soldiers 
who yielded up their lives as prisoners of war at Camp Doug- 
las, and saw the Illinois soldiery fire over those who fought 
for the stars and bars, the same salute that was fired over those 
who fought for the stars and stripes. Within a short time 
there will be unveiled on the capitol grounds at Nashville, a 
monument to Sam Davis, the hero boy of Tennessee, who was 
hung as a rebel spy. General G. M. Dodge, who ordered his 
execution, and many other people of the North were foremost 
among the contributors. The voice of Wheeler that had urged 



on the sons of the South in a hundred battles against the Union, 
rang out with equal devotion while leading our soldiers from 
North and South under the flag of our Common Country. In 
the same uniform, a son of a Grant, and a son of a Lee, ride 
side by side. Am I not right, here in the North, and in this 
assembly, in saying that the American people, reunited, with 
no contest, except in generous rivalry to advance their coun- 
try's welfare, cherishing, but without bitterness, the proud 
memories of their conflict, have long since realized the proph- 
ecy of Mr. Lincoln at his first inaugural that : 

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every bat- 
tlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone 
all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union 
when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels 
of our nature." 

The death of Mr. Lincoln postponed for a dreary time that 
happy era. 

How much humiliation, sorrow, wretchedness and hate, what 
an Iliad of woes, to white and black, came through his untimely 
end, no tongue or pen can ever portray. 

As far as the human mind can estimate and compare what 
was with what might have been, it was for the entire nation, 
but especially for the South, the most lamentable tragedy in 
history. My judgment, based upon years of observation and 
study, is that it was, in the light of subsequent events, more 
regretted by the Southern people than was the fall of the 
Confederacy. 

What conflicts, what ingratitude, what disappointments in 
his great purposes, he may have been spared, we do not know. 



But we know that at the height of his fame, at the triumphant 
close of the great conflict which he had led, he was, by a trag- 
edy that shocked the world, caught up from the stage of human 
action and its vicissitudes, and fixed forever as one of the 
greatest luminaries in that galaxy of illustrious men who will 
shine throughout the ages. 

lie passed out of view like tropic sun that, 
"With disc like battle target red 
Rushes to his burning bed, 
Dyes the wide wave with ruddy light, 
Then sinks at once and all is night." 

Southern-born, with mind, heart, and soul, loyal to its tra- 
ditions, believing that the South was within its constitutional 
rights as the constitution then stood, that her leaders were pa- 
triotic, that her people showed a devotion to principles with- 
out a touch of sordidness, that such action as theirs could only 
come from a deep conviction that counted not the cost of sac- 
rifice, cherishing as a glorious legacy the renown of her armies 
and leaders, whose purity of life and heroism were unsurpassed 
by those of any people at any one time, yet I say in all sin- 
cerity and without reservation, that I rejoice as much as any 
of you that our country produced Abraham Lincoln, who will 
as long as great intellect, patriotism, sincerity, self-denial, mag- 
nanimity, leadership, heroism, and those graces of the mind 
and heart which reflect the gentle spirit are cherished, shed 
luster, not only upon his countrymen, but upon all humanity. 



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